Record does not exist message when trying to import

Amy Disch:

Hello everyone,

I am so close to being able to succesfully import a test file of one record into our constitutent database, but not quite there.

When I validate, I get the exception of Phone Type - Record does not exist.

This is an import of a new record and the field in question contains Email for PhoneType and the email address for PhoneNum.

My four columns look like this:

PhoneAddrImpID         PhoneImpID      PhoneType     PhoneNum

Left empty                    Left empty         Email               respective email address

I saw on previous posts that RE can be funky and to try importing in spite of the validation message. Unfortunately this didn't work and I got the same error message.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Amy

You may need to contact support as it's not always the easiest to help with these type of issues via post.  But, I think your issue is the blank PhoneAddimpID.  Think RE needs the address import ID to know what address record to put the phone on.  If you're importing the address at the same time, just assign the address import ID yourself instead of leaving it blank and then use same ID for the field related to the phone #.

I don't consider myself an expert on importing in any way.  I often run into issues but this is my guess.  Then on tab 1 do you have it checked for new records vs. updating?  When importing new phone even it needs to be checked for new I believe.

Aldera Chisholm:
This is exactly what I was about to say. We create a unique number for each import and put it in under PhoneAddImpID (say 03281401 for first record, 03281402 for second and so on.)

Yes, definitely needs to be unique for each record.  I use format they suggested at import training: date - user initials/import type-#.  (Limit is 20 characters).  Ex: 032814-jsph-0001 for phone import today with under 1000 records in import.  Format is up to user but date like you used too will help to insure that it's unique.

Amy Disch:
Thank you both so much! Adding a unique number in the PhoneAddrImpID field did the trick. Now on to importing 180 new constituents. Thanks again!

My only other advice - which I learned the very hard way - is to make sure you have the bit clicked about using duplicate criteria when adding new records.